Campaign 2008: The Sleaziest Ever?

Are the claims made in the McCain campaign by Sarah Palin worse than those of campaigns past? Not by a long shot, say historians and political scientists interviewed by Politico.com. The experts cite the swift-boating of Kerry in 2004, the implication that Dukakis was unAmerican in 1988, and the anti-Catholic rhetoric against Al Smith in 1926, as evidence of campaigns that crossed the line. Tactics used by the McCain campaign, personified by Sarah Palin, the designated attack dog of the campaign season, are no different than what we’ve seen in recent years, and “less bad” than Presidential campaigns of recent decades, says Professor John Greer, author of In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. The book is based on Greer’s study of campaign ads from 1964 to 2004.

Before the collapse of Wall Street, the McCain campaign put out an internet ad that accused Senator Obama of calling Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a pig, when he used the common phrase putting “lipstick on a pig” to criticize the GOP for trying to make a bad economic situation look better. Obama was alluding to Palin’s own description of herself as a pit bull in lipstick.

Next was the charge that Obama voted for legislation that would have taught “comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners,” a stretch of the facts pertaining to legislation that would teach age-appropriate sex education to kids in grade school, designed to help children in kindergarten learn how to reject advances by sexual predators.

The next wave of assault ads from the McCain campaign accused presidential nominee Obama of a plan to impose “painful tax increases on working American families.” Fact Checkers at ABC-TV found the ad flat-out wrong because the Obama plan would produce a tax cut for the majority of American families.

Politics Becomes Personal

But the self-described, “lipstick on a pig” Republican nominee for vice president, followed this up by launching a personal attack against Obama’s character in a campaign appearance in Englewood, Colorado. Palin told the crowd that,

“This is not a man who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. We see America as a force for good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”

In Palin’s latest attack on Obama’s character, she cited a story in the New York Times that described Obama’s association with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground. The Associated Press later found Palin’s reference exaggerated at best, if not outright false. There is no evidence showing that Obama and Ayers were “pals,” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago in Chicago, or when Ayers hosted a fundraising event for Obama very early in his political career. Obama was 8 years old when Ayers was planting bombs, and since then, Obama has denounced Ayers’ radical views and activities. Ayers is now a professor of English at a local University in Chicago, his bomb-throwing days 40 years past.

Beware the Dark Stranger

Whether intended or not, Palin’s words create the impression that Obama is “not like you and me.” It suggests that Obama’s swarthy skin is similar to the dark-skinned, radical Islamic terrorists we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and implies that Obama, who is Hawaiian-born and a Christian, at the core is un-American. At rallies this week where Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made sinister insinuations about Obama, attendees yelled out “Treason!” “Terrorist’” and “Kill him!” in reference to Obama. At a Florida rally for Palin, a supporter used a racial epithet to attack an African-American member of the media.

In Tampa, Florida, the next day, Joe Biden, Democratic nominee for vice president, said, “to have a vice-presidential candidate raise the most outrageous inferences, the ones that John McCain’s campaign is condoning, is simply wrong … This is beyond disappointing.” This is wrong, Biden told Diane Sawyer of Good Morning America,

“I think it goes way too far. Look, this really is a case where when you don’t have anything to talk about, attack. And it gets really over the edge. I mean, some of the stuff she’s saying about Barack Obama and the stuff that people are yelling from the crowd, if she hears it, she should be at least saying, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa; that’s overboard. This is volatile stuff.”

It makes you wonder who is Sarah Palin who only came to national attention six or seven weeks ago. A new book says she, like the author, is a “Holy Roller,” a member of a charismatic, fundamentalist Pentacostal Church where shouting out and speaking in tongues is practiced, among other out-of-the-mainstream forms of worship that demonstrate the Holy Spirit has touched you.

Author Diane Wilson grew up in a family of Holy Rollers, and she says she has three things in common with Sarah Palin: fishing (Wilson is a shrimper from Texas), five children, and belonging to a church of Holy Rollers. Her latest book is Holy Roller: Growing Up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; Or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus.

Do Holy Rollers where lipstick?